to reveal herself by leaving the bed this morning. She withheld her thoughts behind a mask, but her blond hair was a golden veil and her minimal makeup revealed her natural beauty, fresh-faced and ingenuous.
If this was going to work, she had to fit the mold.
“I’ll book you into a salon today,” he pronounced with the swift call to action that had made his meteoric success possible. It would also fill her day so her nearness wouldn’t tempt him beyond bearing. Women always expected a new wardrobe anyway.
Clair touched her hair, her composed expression denting with confusion. “I had a trim a few weeks ago.”
Aleksy resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “A fashion salon,” he clarified, then added with irony, “So you can wear what I like.” He held a chair at the table for her.
“Why? Taking possession of Victor’s trophy wasn’t enough? You need to stamp your own engraved plate on it?” A betraying unsteadiness undermined her cool challenge.
He didn’t let her remark ignite his temper. “I intend to remove any traces of him from you, yes.”
“For whose benefit?”
She seemed genuinely baffled, which was yet another reminder of her unfamiliarity with the way these arrangements worked.
His housekeeper brought their meals at that moment and he watched Clair withdraw even further behind her frustrating shields as she was offered tea and asked if she’d found everything she’d needed.
After Yvette left, Clair muttered, “As if this isn’t harrowing enough.” Her hand tremored as she helped herself to a croissant, the only betrayal of tension behind an otherwise cool demeanor.
“Harrowing.” Aleksy repeated the unfamiliar word so he’d remember to look it up.
“I’m sure mornings after one-night stands are old hat to you, but this is my first. I’m not exactly comfortable with a stranger witnessing it.”
He tensed. Was that what she thought? “I don’t do one-night stands,” he informed her quietly.
“Or virgins, if I recall. Must have been a two-for-one special.”
“But you’re not a virgin anymore, are you?”
She stilled. Smoldering memories darkened the blue of her eyes, igniting a lovely blush under her skin. She swallowed and looked away.
He didn’t like that she would try to withhold any part of herself from him, especially that intriguing response. Forget experience. She had to know that once wasn’t enough for either of them. He reached out and drew her chin around to face him.
The look in her eyes was shockingly defenseless, full of anxiety and fear coupled with deep longing. Things that stirred a deep, protective desire to comfort her with tenderness…
She jerked back, blinking away the peek into her soul, turning serious. “I need to return to London.”
Her words jolted him with a startlingly strong kick of possessiveness. “Why?”
Clair’s heart jammed under his intense regard. She wanted to be as dispassionate as he was, but it was impossible. Her normal ability to hold people at a distance wasn’t bearing up against Aleksy’s penetrating looks. She didn’t even know why she was having a problem with this. She had known she was a conquest, nothing more, but she still felt vulnerable, out of her element and unaccountably lonely. Everything in her wanted to escape before it got worse.
“To find a job and a place to live,” she reminded him.
It was amazing how his eyes could harden into inscrutable bronze disks that still managed to pierce like lasers. A muted hum sounded and he glanced at the mobile next to his plate. “Perfect.” Turning it, he showed her the message. “Your time is mine now. Along with everything else,” he added with silky danger, his gaze sliding over her like loose, velvet bonds.
Clair read the confirmation of deposit, fifty thousand into her account. Her emotions seesawed as all of yesterday’s repugnance at the arrangement flooded back.
“We agreed on one hundred,” she said, then inwardly shrank from her mercenary retort. But it was for the foundation, she reminded herself. She wasn’t putting herself through this emotional wringer for one pound less than what they’d agreed. With a defiant lift of her chin, she used a show of mutiny to mask her shame.
“You don’t get where I am without performance guarantees. What if you’d changed your mind?” Aleksy was a study of couched power, ready as a tiger to leap.
“But I didn’t. I held up my side of the bargain. I expect you to do the same.” She felt like one of those balls on a tilting table, rolling out of control, destined to fall through a black hole any second.
“You’ll receive the rest when our affair is over.”
She gripped the table. “But— I thought—” Once had been enough for him, hadn’t it? Last night he’d certainly left her with that impression. “It is over, isn’t it?” The hesitant question came out involuntarily. She held her breath, not sure what answer she wanted to hear. Her ears pounded with anticipation as she watched something stark and fervent flash in his eyes.
“Nyet.”
No? Or not yet? She was so lost in trying to read his expression, so off balance by the uneven trip of her pulse that she couldn’t make sense of what he’d said. And she had prepared herself to walk away today, blasé and sophisticated and only slightly scathed. Her incredulous laugh scraped her throat.
“How much longer do you expect it to last?”
He shrugged laconically. “Until I’m bored.”
No. Unpredictability made her anxious. “You can’t expect me to put my life on hold indefinitely.”
“Consider it a lesson against agreeing to open-ended contracts.”
“But—” A panicky lump lodged in her chest. All she could think was how easily he had peeled away her layers of reserve last night. She didn’t know if she could withstand further baring of her inner self.
“What’s the problem? You said yourself you have no rent to pay or employer to report to. Do you want me to say I’ll ensure that those details are looked after before we dissolve our association? Very well. I can agree to that.”
“That’s not—” She searched the hard angles of his face, cringing from the vague distaste curling his lip, wondering how his twisted brain worked that he could only see her as avaricious and self-serving, not scared out of her wits because she was drifting so far over her head. “What did Victor do to you that you’re like this?” she breathed.
The billowing silence told her she’d stepped over a line. “My history with Van Eych is not up for discussion. It has nothing to do with us. You and I have a strong sexual connection that needs to run its course. When it has, I’ll release you and the rest of the funds.”
His words sent a zing of surprise all the way to the soles of her feet. A strong sexual connection? “I thought I was paying for the sins of a man I barely knew,” she charged,
